Re:FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrict...
by FireBeyond on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @05:52PM
(#20520215)
That's downplaying it a bit.
FB allowed the exporting of all sorts of data, from your relationship status, demographic and contact information, information on employers, interpersonal relationship graph to companies who used it to mine information on you without your explicit knowledge (you could refuse them access, but as soon as one of your friends allowed it, your refusal became moot).
Then it built a whole bunch of tooling and ecosystem around this industry. Then it made a lot of money from it.
Then it played dumb. "We didn't know", "We don't allow it, even though we built tools for no other purpose than to facilitate it", and so on.
A little more nefarious than "your friends can tell someone you listen to this band".
FB allowed the exporting of all sorts of data, from your relationship status, demographic and contact information, information on employers, interpersonal relationship graph to companies who used it to mine information on you without your explicit knowledge (you could refuse them access, but as soon as one of your friends allowed it, your refusal became moot).
Then it built a whole bunch of tooling and ecosystem around this industry. Then it made a lot of money from it.
Then it played dumb. "We didn't know", "We don't allow it, even though we built tools for no other purpose than to facilitate it", and so on.
A little more nefarious than "your friends can tell someone you listen to this band".